Shipments Loadout Redesign

Client: Ardent Mills

Role: UX/UI designer & researcher

Timeline: In progress

Ardent Mills is a leading flour milling company in the US with over 40 mills in operation. Correctly filling and shipping orders to clients on schedule is integral to living up to their brand promise. This project involves creating a streamlined shipping experience for the company’s operations platform.

The Context

A module with two experiences

PRISM is Ardent Mills’ custom operations application, designed to keep each mill running like a well-oiled machine. It’s made of several modules, each dedicated to a distinct area of the milling process. The Shipments Loadout module provides users with everything they need to load and ship orders seamlessly.

Before I joined the company, the Shipments Loadout module underwent a redesign. The new design was rolled out alongside the old one, giving users the freedom to switch between the two. The hope was that users would ease into the new experience before any further steps were taken.

The Old Experience

This no-nonsense approach, affectionately referred to as the “old experience”, is your classic data table. Users navigate the data by searching and filtering each column individually. The loadout order types—pack, bulk and feed—are separated into their own pages.

The New Experience

The latest version, a.k.a. the “new experience”, was transformed into a sleek data card. The loadout order types—pack, bulk, and feed—were brought together into a single, unified page, with the search and filter functions operating on a global level.

The Problem

Supporting two versions hindering future development

For more than 4 years, the company has been maintaining two Shipments Loadout experiences. As you can imagine, supporting both has doubled our design and development costs, putting a damper on future development plans. Plus, having two experiences has led to inconsistencies in process among the mills. It was clear that we needed to streamline and reduce down to one.

The Goal

Create one amazing experience

The chief objective of this project was to a unified Shipments Loadout experience by integrating the best features from the previous experiences and addressing any existing gaps. Achieving this goal would not only reduce the unnecessary strain on corporate resources, but it positioned us to support upcoming projects, including streamlining the milling process across all 40+ plants.

Discovery

User survey

Before taking any steps forward, we needed a baseline. A seven-question survey was sent out that covered role, experience preference & satisfaction, feature value ranking, and open feedback. From the 64 respondents we found that 40% preferred the old experience, 23.5% preferred the new, and 25% liked both for different reasons.

Better understanding of roles, tasks and preferences

Now that we had some initial insight into where our users stood, we needed to dig into why. We interviewed seven people to find out:

  • What are the main tasks for their job role?

  • What are their goals when using Shipments Loadout?

  • What experience do they use and why?

  • Is there specific functionality that is missing from either experience?

Who are these users anyway?

The four distinct user groups have their own unique roles with one common mission: to ensure the customer receives the right product, on time.

Key Insights

Users split between the two experiences

We discovered that users were roughly split between the two experiences. Many users loved the modern look of the new experience. Others felt the old experience was easier for viewing large amounts of data.

“I’m comfortable, why switch?”

It became obvious that old experience users clung to it out of comfort, a lack of training, and many weren’t even aware of a new option! These insights highlighted the need to have a well-thought-out plan to transition users to a final solution and retire the old experience.

Driven by interaction with data

Finding specific pieces data was consistently identified as an essential need. While some users favored the global search and filtering features of the new experience, others preferred the option to do so directly within a table.

Gaps in both experiences

Users largely remained loyal to their preferred experience, switching only when a specific functionality was needed. This confirmed that neither experience fully addressed the user’s needs.

Solution

A hybrid approach with improved sorting and filtering

While the four user groups had different tasks and goals, the common thread was their interaction with data. Across all user groups, searching, filtering, and sorting order data was key to completing their respective tasks.

My proposed solution is a blend between the two experiences. Our goal was to preserve the modern form of the new experience, while retaining the features that users liked. Additionally, we wanted to incorporate desired functionality from the old experience and make the data more familiar and identifiable. To do this, we focused on the following:

  • Information Hierarchy: Improving the understanding of content by making data labels more visible and moving secondary information into an expandable card.

  • Data presentation: Finding a balance between the necessary information of data table and the aesthetics of a card layout.

  • Sorting & Filtering: Making it easier to find data by relocating the filters and adding sorting functionality.

A second solution to test

To be sure our design truly met user needs, I developed a second solution to test. While both solutions offer the identical functionality, they differ slightly in their approaches to filtering and the data organization. This solution takes a step further to simplify the table, presenting all data in a single row.

1

Shipments Loadout experience

Target Metrics

<10%

Dissatisfaction survey score

40%

Less development hours spent

20%

Reduction in session clicks

Next Steps

Usability testing to validate the solutions

In the near future, we will use prototypes of each solution to conduct both moderated and unmoderated usability tests. These tests will involve users performing tasks centered on core functionalities such as searching, filtering, and sorting. The goal is to validate whether users can efficiently complete their daily tasks and to identify their preferred solution along with their reasoning. Try the prototype yourself to see what the user will experience.

Analyze, refine and finalize

From that point, we will analyze the results and make adjustments to refine and finalize our solution. Acknowledging that users have their own preferences, we will develop a solid change management plan to facilitate a smooth transition to the final solution while phasing out the current experiences.